Your Body Moves Through Time With Your Mind

THURSDAY Jan. 28, 2010 -- When people think back to the past or look toward the future, their body language reflects their sense of time travel, a new study suggests.

Researchers at the University of Aberdeen fitted subjects with motion sensors and asked them to imagine events in the future or the past. The bodies of those who thought about the future actually moved forward. Those who thought about the past swayed backward.

The findings appear online in the journal Psychological Science.

"The embodiment of time and space yields an overt behavioral marker of an otherwise invisible mental operation," the researchers wrote.

More information

The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke has more on the brain.